Over the past thirty or so years we have been hearing a lot about manifestation and the law of attraction. The law of attraction suggests that through the power of intention you can create the life you want. Many of the suggested ways to create your dreams come true range from vision boards, visualization, affirmations, and thinking positive. Through my years as an Empowerment Guide I’ve seen a lot of individuals working hard at their long desired dreams and goals. After years of work many give up, feeling discouraged, questioning whether this manifestation “stuff” works. Why is it some individuals find success manifesting their dreams while others do not? There is an explanation: humans are complex beings operating simultaneously on multiple levels. Because we operate and process from multiple levels we can have conflicting attitudes about the same thing. The good news is through conscious understanding of the differing attitudes within self; we can minimize the discrepancy, thereby amplifying our positive intentions.
When we form attitudes we have multiple processes happening at the same time. The multiple processes may also be forming different attitudes and opinions about the same object or idea. Attitudes may have been formed through affective (emotional), experiential, or cognitive (mental). Money, sex, love, aging, and health are many of the life topics that I see contradictory attitudes around. An example of this can be seen when a person grows up with mixed messages from their childhood. Maybe they experienced love from one parent and abandonment or criticism from another, now as an adult he or she feels ready for “true love”. They visualize and affirm that they are attracting a loving partner, but are unable to find success. Finally, in despair, they wonder why they can’t attract a partner, while others succeed with this method.
While looking deeper and reflecting from within, we may find that our emotional self is afraid, while their rational mind is feeling ready for love to come in. Unless we intentionally include the emotional attitude, the rational attitude has the controls. The individual finds himself or herself trying harder to manifest their desired goals, which results in being more analytical. When there is a discrepancy between our thoughts and feelings, our thoughts control the dialog. This process hinders us from really seeing ourselves in an honest way. So the emotional attitude goes deeper into the subconscious, while the cognitive attitude is the one most often related to. This translates to a person saying and thinking they want to attract a partner, while deep inside they don’t really want or trust that to happen.When a person chooses to feel their intentions from an affective space, attitudes that were formed as a young person can change. In other words, the cognitive (explicit) attitude only understands rational reasoning, while the affective (implicit) attitude understands the language of affective and feeling. They are like two different languages. When the explicit attitude rationalizes why goals are not being achieved, the implicit attitude goes deeper into the subconscious.
The intervention tools that have been most effective in creating change with the implicit attitude operate outside the rational, such as mindfulness, meditation, and visualization with feeling, or loving up inner self. Many of the tools of visualization can be done from the mind stating desires or from the heart feeling the desires. If you are not achieving success manifesting your goals, look deeper into your feeling world and you may discover a feeling or an attitude that is contradictory to your desired goal. This contradiction is watering down and creating ambivalence with your goal. When you look at it, and love yourself up, the contrary attitude gets weakened and stops being the obstacle separating you from your goals. So love yourself up, and embrace those aspects that are keeping you from manifesting your goals.
